Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Palin on Nidal Hasan: "Profile Away"

I spoke to Governor Palin by phone this afternoon. Lots of interesting material, but to me the most interesting takeaways were the following:

1) I asked about Palin's upcoming visit to Ft. Hood. "We had planned on that before the tragedy struck," she said. She commented on the trail of evidence linking the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, to militant Islam.

"There were such clear, obvious, massive warning signs that were missed," she said. "This terrorist, even having business cards" that identified him as an "SoA" or soldier of Allah.

Palin blamed a culture of political correctness and other decisions that "prevented -- I'm going to say it -- profiling" of someone with Hasan's extremist ideology. "I say, profile away," Palin said. Such political correctness, she continued, "could be our downfall."

If the upcoming investigations into the attack reveal bad decision-making on the part of senior officials, Palin continued, those officials ought to be fired.

Palin visits Ft. Hood on December 4. She plans to donate all the royalties from her book-signing there to the families of the victims.

2) I also asked Governor Palin about Attorney General Holder's decision to try September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in federal court in New York City.

"Does KSM deserve constitutional rights?" I asked.

Palin's response: "Not no, but hell no."

And she went on: "That was an atrocious decision," she said. "And it makes a mockery of our judicial system." She focused in particular on the fear that "war criminals" like KSM and his accomplices will use the trial as a "platform" to denigrate America.

More Palin to come, including her thoughts on President Obama's trip to Asia and the role of the tea-party movement in the GOP ...